Sami could. He’d seen the airports after 9/11, seen the Underground after the London bombings. People still gave him a nervous up-and-down whenever he boarded a plane.

The Christian world would go in meltdown if the CIA predicted more attacks on churches as part of a serial terror plot against Christianity. All the churches would end up empty, or, worse, filled with guns. There was also the risk of copycat attacks.

‘And what are you doing about that madman?’ Morrissey asked, referring to the Russian president. ‘We can’t have him starting World War III.’

‘He’s being briefed as we speak,’ Sami said.

Not that they had any information that would dissuade the Russian president from blowing every terrorist-harbouring nation off the map.

After the third attack in three months, on Milan’s cathedral, again on the twenty-fifth of the month, there was no denying that a terrorist group was targeting churches. Same homemade IED and, as Sami’s team quickly established, likewise no survivors, no witnesses, no martyrdom video, no terror group claiming responsibility.

Cue the shitstorm.

Both Russia and Italy had begun making threats against several nations, including Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Iran and even North Korea. Churches began hiring armed security guards, while white-supremacist groups promised to retaliate by blowing up mosques. The United States responded by raising the national terrorism threat from Blue (guarded) to Yellow (elevated).

Nevertheless, the church attacks had still been thought of as a European problem.

Until now.

SAMI watched as the men in the hazmat suits carefully placed the bulging body bag next to the others: twelve now, neatly lined up on the pavement. There was another much longer row of body bags on the other side of the lot. They were for body parts rather than bodies. He knew he should have been feeling some sort of emotion right now, whether it be sadness or sympathy, anger or disgust, but in truth he felt nothing.

Sami had become immune to scenes like this. He wondered if feeling sorry for the guy that had to go through the bags on the other side of the lot and play mix and match with the body parts counted as an emotion. Probably not.

He pulled out his e-cigarette and took a puff. Lit up by the crime-scene floodlights, as bright as those in any baseball stadium, the white cloud of vaporised nicotine oil looked as real as cigarette smoke.